


Blip on the Radar

by pizza_dog



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Bruce Banner-centric, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3563972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pizza_dog/pseuds/pizza_dog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What happened to you? You look like you just got hit by a train."</p><p>"I was. Twice, I think."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blip on the Radar

"What happened to _you?_ You look like you just got hit by a train."

"I was. Twice, I think."

"Oh." A beat of silence, and then Clint Barton's corded arm offers a naked Bruce Banner a rolled up pair of jeans. "Want some pants?"

"Sure." He's covered in dirt and slouching in a Hulk-sized crater, and has to scramble onto his scraped knees to take hold of the jeans. They're sturdy and blue, without frayed hems or pockets worn through to skin. He grasps the stiff fabric and wonders if the dye will dust off on his hands; it's been a while since he's held new clothes meant for him. Too bad the circumstances are like this.

His skin itches and burns. He ignores this as he stumbles into the pants. Then he secures the stretchy waistband and glances up at Barton. The archer has his arms folded over his chest, and one hand holds a flinty, detached arrow head. He twists it over and over in his palm. Bruce blinks at it. Then Barton nods and swivels a bit in the dirt, casting his gaze over their surroundings. "How's life in Malawi going for you?"

"I wasn't in Malawi last night."

"Oh yeah. Where were you? Um. Uganda?"

"Yeah." Banner rolls his chapped lips together, and his eyes wander from Barton to the sea of trees that engulf them. A sleek quinjet crouches in a nearby clearing, its brushed black shell almost anachronistic among the virgin grasses. Banner scratches at his bare chest, and his chin dips to his throat. "How many?"

Clint faces Bruce again, his eyes contemplating. "Well, there were trains. One was all cargo. The other, you destroyed a car that had twenty people inside. Then there were three men near the site. And a kid." His brows twitch, and he takes the smallest of breaths before continuing. "They were dead. You left a trail of smashed homes, but mostly trees, and the tracks need to be rebuilt in some places, but that's…"

"That's ‘it’?" Bruce finishes for him. The blood drains from his face and he teeters on the balls of his mud-caked feet. He blinks, and breathes, and swallows down the searing bile that surges up his throat.

Clint’s lips fold into a frown. He waits.

When Bruce looks steadier on his feet Clint pockets the arrowhead. "SHIELD wants me to take you back."

Bruce licks his crusty, cracking lips. "Relocation." He figures a fancy SHIELD cage is being dusted off for him as they speak. "Permanent residency?"

"Don't think so." Then he pauses and shrugs, "Dunno."

"Where're the tranqs and shiny Hulkbuster guns?"

"I told them that it'd be better without... all that."

Bruce nods slowly and deliberately, though his worried lip betrays his skepticism. One stiff thumb is hooked in a pocket, while the other rubs at the bristle on his jaw. He inhales a deep breath of moist Malawian air and curls his toes into the red soil. "I know people've been calling for my head, ever since… everything spilled."

"Yeah. But you know it's died down in the last couple years."

"Way to make a reappearance," Bruce murmurs.

There's a beat of taut silence between them until Clint speaks up again. "Wanna get a drink?"

"... Sure."

So Clint takes the quinjet near some city in Malawi; they hide it in the brush and foot it the rest of the way, wandering through the streets in search of a bar.

Bruce walks like he knows his way around the place, and Clint thinks it's because he's been through so many cities without a map or a guide that he could probably make sense of a maze blindfolded. Clint follows, watches, and doesn't talk much. After ten minutes of traversing the crowds and brushing off the overt stares, he spots a bar and points it out to Bruce, who shrugs his now-clothed shoulders. They'd found a shirt and some military boots in the jet, and though the boots are two sizes too big and the shirt a little tight in the shoulders, he's at least dressed.

Looking thoroughly out of place they step past the bouncer and into the stuffy confines of the bar. They make a beeline for the counter. Clint observes the way Bruce’s eyes sweep the place before he perches on a rickety stool. The action is automatic and Clint picks up on it right away, because he does the same thing.

He settles beside Bruce. Soon they're slurping at the lukewarm, foamy beer and letting the hum of the atmosphere replace conversation.

Bruce's drink is gone in mere minutes, and he's taking another one and emptying that at record pace. His hands are trembling and his grip on the glass is slick with sweat. Sometimes he breaks into a fervor of jittery, paranoid movement—he peeks over his shoulders, nurses his beer in his shaky grasp, and he bounces his leg and ducks his head every time someone passes. But that all only lasts for an instant before the calm washes over him again and he's sucking in lungfuls of stale air, and Clint can see him concentrating to soothe each tension-wrought muscle.

Clint calculates how long they have until SHIELD knocks down the doors. As damaged as they are, they're still powerful, and they won't take kindly to a walking weapon of mass destruction vanishing with their prized archer-Avenger. They probably think the monster has ripped him in two by now, or that it will make an unwelcome reappearance in some highly populated area. Again. But Clint just sees a middle-aged man who's inhaling his piss-beer and is on some precipice between wielding some truly unearthly coping abilities and totally breaking down and weeping on the stained wood countertop.

Clint exhales a silent burp and watches as two quivering fingers inch up towards a forcefully blank face. Bruce kneads the creased space between his bloodshot eyes and releases a sigh that slackens all of his leaden muscles. His other fist releases the empty glass, and a foggy hand is printed on its chipped surface.

"I'll be back," he says in a carefully neutral tone, and Clint nods curtly and watches him as he slinks away as a skinny, nondescript shadow in the crowd. Clint has half a mind to follow him. He hunkers down in his seat and waits instead.

It's about twenty minutes later when Bruce reappears as if from thin air and slips onto the stool beside Clint. His eyes are now puffy and red-rimmed and he's still paler than the moon, but he isn't as jittery. His movements are more poised and precise, and he looks a lot more like the Bruce that Clint had first met four years ago. There's this nearly-palpable gravity on his shoulders, though, and he slumps forward just enough so that Clint can really see how drained he is.

Clint, who hasn't actually had much to drink—he'll have his six pack at the apartment, but not on the job—offers Bruce another.

"It doesn't actually affect me anyway. Accelerated metabolism."

"Like Cap."

"Exactly like Rogers." Bruce twists his lip. "Actually, no." He pauses, and the crow's feet at the outskirts of his eyes crinkle up as if there's some silent in-joke that only he can comprehend.

Clint certainly doesn't, and he just keeps looking at Bruce, who eventually shifts on his seat bones and deflects, "Stark wanted to make super-scotch so I could get drunk. Told him it wasn't a very good idea."

"What happened between you two, anyways? He gets--hurt, whenever your name's brought up."

Bruce hums a little and his hand twitches, like he wants to fidget with something. His glass is gone so Clint watches as his calloused fingers start rubbing against the coarse edge of the wooden counter.

"Creative differences."

Bullshit.

It's only when Bruce's lips twitch into the ghost of a wry smile that Clint realizes he said that aloud. Bruce draws a small breath and doesn't even acknowledge Clint's incredulity. "Are you ready to take me back to home sweet home?"

As if this outing is for Clint's convenience and conscience, and not for Bruce's sake.

"It might just be a few words exchanged; maybe they need a consult for some new alien tech radiation or some shit. If they try and offer you up to the public eye, get a trial going or whatever—I mean, we'll stop it."

"I've caused billions of dollars in property damage, I've killed hundreds of civilians and military personnel, and I've hurt who knows how many more people and their families. It's no surprise the public wants my head now that they know who I am."

Bruce lists all this off without a single wobble in his throat, though his eyes glaze over as the breath leaves his lips. Clint's features remain neutral, too, though his brows furrow slightly. "So you'll let them take it?"

"I'm the expert on my own biology, and if I can't end this, I don't expect anyone else would be able to either. Why d'you think I've been off the map ever since this all came to light? The Other Guy… won't take kindly to an attempted execution. Or a staged execution that lands me—us—in a lab."

"Why're you so sure they'll execute you? You did good, during the Chitauri invasion. Even the ICC doesn't execute, and they're supposed to handle—real bad people. People who actually—"

"Deserve punishment?" The two words leave Bruce's mouth as a self-effacing half-laugh, and it's just enough to set Clint's lips into a hard, narrow line. "If you've read my files, you might recall that I don't quite qualify as human anymore. I'm a dog to be put down, at this point. And don't say it's not justified just because you see a human face in conjunction with—him. It."

"D'you think people are calling for _Thor's_ head? He's done damage, he _isn't_ really human, and nobody's gonna euthanize him like some dog that snapped one too many times—"

Bruce shakes his head, as if Clint could never comprehend, and it is just one inch too close to patronizing.

"Goddammit. Stop that, man. This whole self-loathing thing you've got going on—"

"Now you sound like Stark."

It clicks in Clint's head that this is what the two must have fought about—and that yeah, he is being kinda obnoxious to the guy who just unconsciously killed a bunch of people and looks like he hasn't slept in a year. Because god, if Clint knows anything at all, he knows what it's like to not have control over his own actions. He knows what it's like to realize he's killed innocent people. The situations are entirely different, and he's sure it feels different for Bruce—but he knows, or at least he thinks he has an idea.

They release simultaneous calming breaths, and the frustration that was rising up between them, like a stinging static electricity, slackens. Clint ends up taking a sip of his beer and then offers the rest to Bruce, who takes it. They spend a good ten minutes in a vaguely uncomfortable, but mostly withdrawn silence. Clint takes this time to glimpse at the other patrons and listen to the unfamiliar tongue being spoken around them, and reflect on this whole sticky ordeal.

He remembers the tabloids just after the leak from two years back. So many secrets that never would have seen the light of day were skewed and debated over live television, in online chat rooms, plastered on the headlines of every newspaper around the globe—any yellow journalism that had taken place in history paled in comparison to this.

And one of the oft-discussed topics was—and is—the Incredible Hulk. He was briefly glorified after New York, but even then he had done damage. Even though the spectacle of the green beast saving a fallen Iron Man was immortalized, the perceived evil of the Hulk's actions hasn't been deemed null. The damages that Bruce rattled off were unexaggerated truths that the media latched onto, and still won't let go.

Clint knows that the infamous SHIELD offering up the monster to the public would be a considerable step towards placating the masses. He starts to think that maybe this retrieval attempt isn't so that Dr. Banner, nuclear physicist and engineer, can toil away in a lab.

Bruce is blinking down at the popping suds of his beer and is taking measured breaths. His hands are clasped together, rough fingers dancing over stiff white knuckles.

Clint is almost certain of what he's going to do, and he knows SHIELD is having a heart attack right about now, so he clears his throat and, because he isn't all that great with words and he figures he should just dive in and get the answers he needs, he asks, "So what happened last night, anyway?"

Bruce's fingers freeze for a moment. Then they start tapping again. "Saw a coupla punks beating this kid within an inch of his life. The kid kept screaming for his dad, for them to stop, please stop—and that's—"

"When you tried to stop it for him?" Clint's gaze darkens.

"No." Another acerbic almost-smile. "Normally that doesn't—I see it, it doesn't set me off. But last night, it just wasn't the right day; I was gone before I could really register the situation. I remember them—" His lips press together briefly "—screaming. I remember something about the trains. And that's… it. Then I woke up to you offering me pants."

Bruce takes a shallow sip of his drink. Clint bobs his head. Then he fishes for his wallet, realizes he doesn't have money in this currency, and curses under his breath. The scientist catches on in a millisecond and starts conversing with the bartender in an incomprehensible language. It rolls off Bruce's focused tongue, and Clint can tell that he hasn't mastered it. But judging by the way the bartender reacts, he's had a lot of practice.

They work something out—Bruce was pointing at the broken television in the corner, and who knows what he told the guy—but Clint sheds a fair sum of his cash and they depart without a fuss. Once they step under the harsh scrutiny of the sun, Clint halts and fixes his gaze on Bruce.

"Are you good? If you stay here?"

Bruce gives Clint a dubious look. "I just lost everything I've gained over the last two years. But... this isn't a new situation for me. I can make do. And I just, uh, got some work from that man for a few days. Room and board.”

Damn bastard knew what Clint was going to do before Clint was even certain.

"...Okay. There aren't any bugs in those clothes I gave you. I'll… handle things on my side."

"Don't get yourself in too much trouble."

"I will. But Coulson's really a softie, deep down inside. Really deep down inside."

They both know that it can't ever be as simple as that. SHIELD will send in the guns next time, not an archer with a soft heart. And there will most certainly be a next time.

"Huh." Bruce scuffs his feet into the sand. His eyes are downcast. "Thanks for the jeans."

Clint offers Bruce a small nod before shifting his weight and turning away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the following betas: ananiah, The Glass Sea, TrueManevolanGirl4899, Maralexa, Ajluv. They can be found over on fanfiction.net.  
> If you find any typos or things that should be fixed, feel free to let me know. Many thanks to you for reading!


End file.
